Climate scandal has implications for Alberta

While the Climategate scandal has set the scientific world atwitter and sparked debate in the U.S. Congress, it's barely raised a ripple in Alberta political circles.

How strange in a province that will be hard hit by the economic consequences of laws designed to force us to produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions.

The kerfuffle over the integrity of global warming science began after material was hacked from the U.K.'s Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

The leaked files reveal prominent scientists prevented dissenting researchers from getting their hands on raw data they had used to reach findings which formed the cornerstone for the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change reports.

These in turn form the basis for the ambitious and costly goals being set out at the upcoming Copenhagen conference.

The e-mails also reveal plotting to keep dissenting scientists from publishing their findings in peer-reviewed journals.

They also show some data used to find that global warming is caused by human activity was flawed. Yesterday we learned much of the raw data has been destroyed.

While the head of the CRU has stepped down while the university conducts an investigation, many proponents of manmade global warming say this is a tempest in a teapot.

They, along with our own governments, have told us only draconian cuts in man-made emissions will spare the planet from catastrophe.

This scandal appears to show some scientists at least have been eager to twist the rules of science to reach the conclusions they personally favour.

We won't argue the science one way or another -- it's enough to make the average layman's head spin.

The question that really needs answering here is whether the toll on mankind by global warming will be greater than that inflicted by the huge economic costs of reducing emissions on a global scale.

The trade-off is already hitting home.

Alberta is poised to spend billions on carbon capture and storage while health care and education face deep cuts. And this is just a taste of things to come.

Politicians in this province, with its carbon dependent economy, should be leading the charge to find out whether we've been steered in the right direction.